Good morning. It's a privilege to be here today. I'm here with Ronell Bosman, who is the programme director at a homeless shelter for women in Nanaimo.
Island Crisis Care Society is a non-profit society that helps people in crisis. We hope to help them stabilize and move forward with their lives, especially as we look at housing options and different things that are in place for people with multiple challenges and maybe concurrent disorders.
Today, as I say, we are very privileged. I want to speak, first of all, about the lack of affordable housing in our area. Prices of housing have skyrocketed in Nanaimo, and on Vancouver Island generally, so we're seeing many landlords who are deciding to just sell their properties and cash in. That leaves people not able to find a place to rent. People who have lived in their rental units for 15 years are calling us, because now they're not going to have anywhere to go. The possible places they can go to and afford at this time are very slim. Landlords with vacancies are able to charge extortionate rates because there's so little available.
As I said, Samaritan House is the homeless shelter for women, and it's the only one on the mid-island. We operate out of a 100-year-old building, so of course there are many stairs and many challenges. We also provide supportive and transitional housing for women, and rent subsidies. Since we added these additional supports in 2013, through a project with BC Housing, we've seen how beneficial it is to have the option to move the women—as they need more supports—in and out of these different programs. We've found the positive relationships they've built with the staff have really been helpful as they move through those transitions. When they have a change in circumstance or need more support, we find that it doesn't seem as much of a failure when they have to accept more support.
This year, we had an 82-year-old woman and a 76-year-old woman, who so far have accessed our homeless shelter for the first time. We have 14 shelter beds and six supported units in this 100-year-old building, but we're finding it extremely challenging due to the lack of space. It's so hard to turn women away, and to what alternative? To sleep in the bush, or to go back to unsafe rental conditions or perhaps a drug house?
Women often return to violence, or back to these different places, because they have nowhere else to go. These are very challenging times. We put as many women as we can on mats on the floor in our dining room, but in the daytime they simply have to leave, because we can't be all mixed up with one another. Our building is just too small.
Another concern has to do with disabilities, mental disorders, and addictions, and our ability to provide a therapeutic community for these clients. Having eight women sleep in a dormitory on bunk beds is not helpful when you might have one person who's experiencing psychosis, another who's in active drug addiction, and then perhaps a senior lady who's never been homeless before.
Persistent patterns of victimization are not only a barrier to housing, but also a barrier to opportunities for healing and for moving forward. In the last two months, we have had two different clients with terminal cancer staying at our shelter, because there was nowhere else for them to go.
In 2012, we purchased the lot next door to Samaritan House, and we've been trying to expand and upgrade the shelter. We received about $50,000 for pre-development from the homelessness partnering strategy—federal money for capital projects—but it's no longer available for us because HPS no longer supports capital funding. We are desperately trying to find ways to expand our shelter so that we can effectively serve the women with more than just a bed.
We would like to be able to offer our clients the skills and life training they need, but we don't even have a room for group meetings. There have been opportunities provincially for capital funding for affordable housing, but not for shelters, and we recognize that it's extremely important to rapidly house clients when they come in—preferably within a month—so that they have the best opportunity to stay housed. It's very challenging to do that, but we really try our best, and Ronell does an amazing job.
Last summer we were so excited when we heard that there was federal money available for us—$10.9 million across Canada—for the construction and renovation of shelters and transition houses for victims of family violence. We were told to quickly get the quotes together for the needed renovations—much needed renovations, I can tell you. We did that. We got the quotes together, and that was no easy feat with the busyness of the trades in Nanaimo. We put those quotes together in July, and we still have not heard anything. So much time and effort was put in, and now the quotes are too stale to use anyway.
Our society also works in Parksville, about a half an hour north of Nanaimo. In 2014, we were successful and received funding through the rural stream of the HPS. We started a housing first initiative. We hired an outreach worker. We were able to find leases for five apartments and, therefore, house five people through this program. But then the next year we didn't receive that funding. We were faced with whether or not to evict these clients whom we had finally been able to stabilize. What did we do? I'm so happy to say that we were able to find funding just through fundraising, and now we continue that process, but every year we have that struggle of how to raise the money for this program.
On the HPS funding, I would really like to recommend that recipients not to have to make an ongoing annual annual application for the rural stream. We would like to see a three-to-five year application so that when you start a program, you're not having to backtrack and try to figure out how to put it together. I also would like to recommend that HPS start to fund capital again, because that is so important to us.
Investment in affordable housing is imperative, but just as important is that safe environment where women can be helped to move through the challenges. After trauma they may not be ready right away, but we want to help them to be empowered as the women they were meant to be.
I want to close very quickly with a comment from a client, who said:
I stayed in the shelter for a week to ten days. Little did I know that Sam House programs and the incredible staff and clients would be my home away from home for the next four and a half years. This includes living at Mary's Place for just over a year and for the past few months at Martha's Place. Mary's Place, a house in the north end of Nanaimo, within walking distance of Walmart, is transitional housing through ICCS (Island Crisis Care Society). Six women share this house; I was one of two people who lived in what I called the in-law suite downstairs. Martha's Place is supported housing at Samaritan House. There are six rooms. I am in one of the upstairs rooms, it's small but has a bar-sized fridge, a microwave AND an ocean view!
Samaritan House was a gift from God on a cold winter's day. Both Mary's and Martha's Place were and are ships in the storm of life. I am grateful to everyone involved in ICCS from the people on the board to the front line workers and everyone in between.... You will never know how much you change lives for the better. Thank you!